Brentford v Arsenal: low shooter v high shooter, low fouls v high fouls.

 

 

 

• Against Brentford, Arenal must beat the opposition and overcome the referee.
• The numbers that prove there is something very very fishy with PL refereeing
• Arsenal and Brentford – is the opposition only good against certain clubs?

By Bulldog Drummond

In terms of attack Brentford put in just under four shots fewer than Arsenal per game, get just under two fewer goals per game than Arsenal and have 8.1% less possession than Arsenal.  So the recipe for Brentford must surely to be to improve the possession and get the ball forward.

 

Team	Shots per game	Goals per game	Possession
Arsenal	14.1	1.94	55.7%
Brentford	10.5	1.77	47.6%

 

And this reveals Brentford’s connundrum.  They don’t have as much possession as they would undoubtedly wish for so they take fewer shots per game and score fewer goals per game.  But if they just to try shoot on sight, that may well not help them score more goals – they need to get into better positions.  Possession is the key.

But because Brentford have the lower possession rate their defence is under more and more pressure and what lets Brentford down is their  defence. They have conceded exactly twice as many goals as Arsenal (32 to 16).

So clearly Brentford are under performing in attack, but things are made much worse by the underperforming in defence.  Opposition sides realise this and so go in quite vigorously against Brentford.

And here is a very curious thing: in terms of the number of times Brentford are fouled in a match – they are fouled the least with 9.1 fouls against Brentford men per game.  This compares with Southampton at 13.2 fouls against them per game. Arsenal are fouled 10.1 times a game.

Yet in terms of attack the fact is Brerntford have scored the same number of goals as Manchester City and Newcastle United.  They are fifth in the scoring table – Arsenal are fourth.

But when it comes to defence Brentford have conceded the sixth most goals in the League.  Arsenal with half the number conceded as Brentford have the lowest number of goals against.   So overall Brenford are 11th in the goal differeence table, Arsenal are second.   Still at least Brentford can say they have a better goal difference than Aston Villa and Manchester United both of whom were tipped to perform quite well this season.

While we are at the stats we can also have a look at the cards being waved around by referees, and you may well remember the story about Arsenal having three red cards early in the season.  It made all the media, and was repeated over and over.  But now… well, nothing.  Not even when Arsenal have 36 yellow cards this season and Chelsea have 56 – the media is so lost they are not even writing articles telling Arsenal to toughen up.

And I noticed this again today because Brentford v Arsenal is the battle of the bottom two.  30 yellows to Brentford, 36 to Arsenal.  

But to come back to the match, the big difference between Arsenal and Brentford is with shots on target.  Arsenal have 14.1 per game, and Brentford10.5 per game.  So how are referees treating the clubs?

Now these figures are curious indeed.  Brentford commit more tackles than Arsenal but manage to get away with fewer fouls and fewer yellow cards because of fouls.  And what is the consequence of that?  Probably that by trying this tactic in away games it falls down flat.

 

Team	Tackles	Fouls	Yellows
Arsenal	16.7	11.4	1.22
Brentford	17.3	8.3	1.05

 

And let’s emphasise this point because it is odd.  Brentford tackle more, but get noticeably fewer fouls against them and fewer yellows.  Let’s look at the ratios

 

Team	Tackles / foul	Tackles / yellow	Fouls / yellow
Arsenal	1.46	13.69	9.34
Brentford	2.08	16.48	7.90

And so we can see the fallacy of this approach – even though they are tackling less and fouling less than Arsenal, when they do foul they are 17% more likely to get a yellow card.

As for the team the Metro goes with

Raya

Timber Saliba Gabriel Calafiori

Havertz Rice Odegaard

Martinelli Jesus Trossard

90Min prefer 

Raya;

Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, Lewis-Skelly;

Rice, Merino, Odegaard;

Martinelli, Havertz, Jesus.

And that’s about it.  We shall see.